Quote:
Originally Posted by Vjo
You got to move to the midwest and live modestly. I fig 200K is 120K after taxes. You can easily live fine off 60K espec if you have housing already taken care of. If you moved then it is a little tight as you will need to rent or maybe buy but you then save 1/2 or 60K a year. Also if you already have a decent car, that helps.
Even if you give 3000/month to housing and all overhead ($1500 mortgage if needed, $500 car payment if needed, 1000 covers insurance, prop tax, all of the rest.
You then have $500 a week. Ok $100 a week for food covers ya. You now have $400 a week to play with as discretionary income.
It can be done.  Like I say already being here and having housing certainly makes things workout better. Then you really have decent money left on 60K/year. |
you can eat a whole week for $100? Last time I went to US food was really expensive. Obviously, prices are higher for tourists, but still we spent around $100 A DAY (me and my wife and nothing fancy). And way above 100 A MEAL if we went to a nice place.
Anyway, you're right in everything you said (I learned it the hard way, but at least I bought 2 houses before everything went to to the crapper), it's stupid to spend everything you earn in such a volatile business, I have variations of up to 500% on a month per month basis and nowhere close to what I made 8-10 years ago, when I was in a position where I could buy a nice home every single year without even having to make an effort.
Nowadays, if I had to rent the house that I live in (plus my office, which I rent) while keeping the same lifestyle, I don't know if I'd be able to pay for it every single month. Pretty sure I would be always delayed, with some months not paying and some months paying 2 months together. And we don't have a very rich lifestyle, just living pretty comfy, but nothing extreme. And even when I live in a pretty wealthy neighborhood and in a pretty big place, the bottom line is that no more than 5 years ago I would never have an issue to pay for this. (sorry to all my fans that believe I've a Ferrari and several mansions
)
Another thing is that when you have kids, financial plans are very difficult to follow, there's always something new, and to make it worse, if my daughters ask for something i just gave them as much as I can, I need to work that behavior
